CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 201

that the following measures of the western front of the cathedral of Pisa, would be looked upon by present architects as very blundering approximations. That front is divided into seven arched compartments, of which the second, fourth or central, and sixth contain doors; the seven are in a most subtle alternating proportion; the central being the largest, next to it the second and sixth, then the first and seventh, lastly the third and fifth. By this arrangement, of course, these three pairs should be equal; and they are so to the eye, but I found their actual measures to be the following, taken from pillar to pillar, in Italian braccia, palmi (four inches each), and inches:¹-

Total in

Braccia.Palmi.Inches.Inches.

1. Central door800 =192

2. Northern door631½ =157½

3. Southern door643163

4. Extreme northern space553½ =143½

5. Extreme-southern space610½ =148½

6. Northern intervals between the doors521 =129

7. Southern intervals between the doors521½ =129½

There is thus a difference, severally, between 2, 3 and 4, 5, of five inches and a half in the one case, and five inches in the other.

§ 10. This, however, may perhaps be partly attributable to some accommodation of the accidental distortions which evidently took place in the walls of the cathedral during their building, as much as in those of the campanile. To my mind, those of the Duomo are far the more wonderful of the two; I do not believe that a single pillar of its walls is absolutely vertical: the pavement rises and falls to different heights, or rather the plinth of the walls sinks into it continually to different depths, the whole west front literally overhangs, (I have not plumbed it; but the inclination may be seen by the eye, by bringing it into visual contact with the upright pilasters of the Campo Santo:) and a most extraordinary distortion in the masonry of the southern wall shows that this inclination had

¹ [See below, p. 275, for an allusion to this table of measurements.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]